What racism? Well, there was Rachel Johnson, prime minister Boris Johnson's sister, who commented that Markle had "rich and exotic DNA." There was the BBC commentator who tweeted an image of Meghan and Harry holding hands with a chimpanzee and joked that it was their son. There was the Daily Mail headline"Harry's girl is (almost) straight outta Compton," on a story that enumerated the recent crimes that have taken place near Markle's childhood home, and listed all the street gangs known to operate in the area, reminding the reader again and again that the neighborhood where she was born "couldn't be more different" from the tony environment in which Prince Harry was raised.
Then there was the sense that, no matter what she did, Markle could never do anything right. At least according to some critics in the press, who earnestly insisted that it wasn't her race they objected to, it was some other thing that she'd done wrong. Like when she was roundly criticized for guest-editing an issue of VogueUK. Dan Wootton, executive editor of The Sun went on TV to say, outrage in his voice, that "Royals don't guest-edit magazines!" Except that they have a long tradition of doing just that. Prince Charles guest-edited Country Life twice. Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, to whom Markle is frequently unfavorably compared, was praised for guest-editing the Huffington Post and she also posed for the cover of the UK Vogue. But just in case there was any doubt as to the true reason for objections to Markle, the Mail dug up her family tree and published it.Writing, "Now that's upwardly mobile! How in 150 years, Meghan Markle's family went from cotton slaves to royalty."
And then there are the other members of the royal family, who have met all this abuse with silence. "You never see them speaking out about the racism, standing beside her, defending her. She's been all alone," a black immigrant to Britain from South Africa told the New York Times.